I've had my Pixel 9 Pro XL for a few days now and I will toss out some thoughts that I have. Most of these will likely be negative thoughts without a bunch of positives, (though some) but it's not because the phone sucks or anything. It's just the fact that when you switch to a new phone, the bad points tend to bubble to the surface.
Price - Good
Google offered me $350 off because I was a Google Fi customer without a trade-in and offered to double my memory for free. So, I paid about $750 for the Pixel 9 Pro XL with 256GB of internal storage. They offered me another $125 off for my Pixel 7 Pro that has no damage on it. I opted to keep my Pixel 7 Pro as my wife tends to break her screens within a year. (she gets a new phone every year because of this, I get one every two years)
Phone Size - Good
So, I generally do not buy the big jumbo phones. I normally get the normal sized version. That said, the offer above was for the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and not the other versions that I could tell. That said, when it arrived I was thinking it was going to be a big hulking phone, but instead it's very close to the same exact size as my Pixel 7 Pro was.
Heavy - Not Good
The phone is definitely heavier than the Pixel 7 Pro. It just flat out feels more dense. I won't say it's absurdly heavy, but you can definitely notice the extra heft.
Squared Off Sizes - Not Good
The Pixel 7 Pro had sort of rounded off sides of the phone. The Pixel 9 Pro XL is more boxy which I immediately deem as less comfortable to hold. (especially combined with the extra weight)
Physical Side Buttons - Not Good
The side buttons are lower down on the phone and I have far more difficulty using them. I usually fail more than once trying to hit the volume or power buttons. I'm not sure if it's the buttons, the location of the buttons, or just the silicone case I use, but they are much more of a pain to use. It's likely just because I'm not fully used to it yet, but we shall see.
Camera - Good
I'm not a big picture taking guy, but I went to see Joe Bonamassa the day that I got the phone and I took several pictures and I must say. The pictures quality in a dark theater was much improved over the Pixel 7 Pro quality of photos in that setting.
Touch Screen Accuracy - Not Good
I've considered this a few times and what I believe the issue I'm having is is due to the higher resolution that this phone is set at than my Pixel 7 Pro. I use the Nova launcher and the grid now has five slots across the home screen rather than four. So it's definitely a higher resolution and I believe that is what is causing the accuracy issue. (to be clear, I'm talking about playing Bejeweled Blitz only)
So, this issue is definitely not a deal breaker and I will likely adapt to it with time.
Fingerprint Sensor - Not Good
I'm unclear as to why, but sometimes it takes me several attempts to unlock the phone with the fingerprint sensor. This is increasingly annoying.
Helpful Hint for PIA VPN Users
When I copied all my things to the new phone, my PIA VPN application kept crashing as soon as I tried to open it. I was thinking maybe it was an incompatibility with this phone / Android version. Though, after going into Android Settings -> App -> PIA -> Storage and dumped the cache and data and then re-entered my credentials. The VPN returned to normal operation.
I hope this helps someone.
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